The Storm Of Fire
by ChrisfromMars
Summary: Nico shadow travels him and his friends to Rome, where he meets one of the Fates stranded in the mortal world. She takes away his shadow traveling powers, and says she'll return them if he "gets her out of there". Meanwhile Percy has to deal with his Earthshaker half brothers who don't know friend and enemy apart. In all this confusion, the question still lingers. Storm, or Fire?
1. Chapter 1

_**This story takes place directly after the end of the book "The House of**_** Hades"**

**CHAPTER ONE **The Shadow Realm.

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Nico opened his eyes. The first thing he realized was the smell. Burnt metal and rotting meat. It reminded him of Leo. Suddenly memories came flooding back. Gaia, the Argo II, the quest, Percy... Nico was suddenly angry with himself for remembering things.  
His eyes started to work. When they did, he wished they would turn off again. He was looking at the black, starless sky. Hovering in it was a massive hourglass. One by one grains of sand fell from the top half, to the bottom. With each "thud" another person died. This was the hourglass counting down to the end of the world.

Nico sat up. He looked around. There were patches of black everywhere. They were the shadows. Were there were no shadows, there was a blinding light. Nico stood up. He hadn't moved from the entrance to the House of Hades in Greece where he had last seen Percy. But he was in shadow form. And he needed to move. Now. There was the sound of groaning behind him. Nico turned abruptly. There was a column of green glowing light, about half his size. Next to it was a purple column a little taller than him. Reyna and Hedge.

There are a few things you should know about the shadow realm. One, it always looks like the real world except everything in it looks dead. Trees have no leaves, the grass is black and stinks to Olympus, the sky is empty all except for the hourglass of Thanatos, and humans are nothing but their glowing life streams. Nico took in a deep breath, "you two, there will be time to snuggle latter, get up!" They stood up immediately.  
Reyna slowly drifted sideways, trailing purple light. "Am I underwater or something? Why am I moving so slow!?"  
Nico almost smirked. Almost. "I'm going to pull you along through this place, your job is to hold onto the Athena Parthenos."  
The green gob of light stood upright. "Right, because we've been strong enough to drag a thousand pound statue around this whole time! Nope, nothing unusual about that!" Nico wasn't very good with his temper, but today he found his friend's stupidity amusing. "First, its actually about three thousand pounds, at least, second, yeah you can."

Nico looked up at the towering Athena Parthenos,  
and willed it to be linked to Reyna and Hedge. A golden chain shot from the ground at the statue's feet, leaving a large crater in the ground. Suddenly, a hole appeared below the rim of the crater, the dirt that used to reside in it's place, crumpled to the bottom. Almost immediately another hole bored its way next to the first one. And another next to that, until the entire edge of the crater was ridged with the holes.

Almost as if the holes were the end of a pipe, a foul smelling black goo began to leak out of each of them, filling the crater. When the crater was filled, the goo hardened, and black grass peaked it's way to the surface. So basically, the shadow equivalent of the world, was a ball of goo growing mold spores. Nico hated being the son of Hades. Being close friends with Death, he often saw things the way they _really_ were. Even if they were supposed to be too horrid for his human brain to handle. Nico lifted his gaze from the crater, resting it on the golden chain hovering in the air. One end wrapped tightly around the leg of the Athena Parthenos, the other around both of his brain-numb companions.

Nico drifted over to the two glowing columns of light. When he spoke, they both changed to colors of alarm momentarily. They hadn't seen him approach. "Listen, focus on the chain, focus on holding it, and whatever you see, WHATEVER happens, do, NOT, scream."

The next few seconds were a blur of motion. He had willed Reyna and Hedge to bind with the glowing light that he had become. They soon became one white column. He drifted, slowly at first, then quickly. In less than 4 seconds, they were in a green field, the Parthenos standing beside them. Nico looked at the mossy hills that separated him from the cobble laden world of Rome. He couldn't remember the last few minutes, all he remembered was taking one last look at Percy, closing his eyes, and opening them here. His friends laid in the softly swaying grass beside him. He looked up, the sky was bright blue, the sun peeping in and out of the clouds. His knees buckled, _NO!_ He screamed inside, _I can't fall asleep here!_ They were out in the open, but sleep was gnawing it's way into Nico. He had to do something, fast. With all his might, he managed to summon 3 week skeletons, with painfully degraded Ivory swords. _It will have to do, _he thought. _Protect us,_ Nico willed, right before his eyes closed and he fell.

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**This is the first thing I've uploaded to fan fiction, so I don't expect it to be particularly good. If you found any issues with this please feel free to criticize, no need to hate. This is the first chapter of a long story, so stay tuned for later. Nico gets visited by a grumpy old lady, and Percy meets some new relatives... **

**Oh yeah, quick disclaimer, the only thing I own is the basic plot of THIS story. All themes, characters, and backgrounds belong to the genius behind them, Rick Riordan. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N This chapter is a bit longer, sorry if I make any mistakes. I'm posting this rather late and my brain is doing it's best "rage quit" impersonation. If I make any mistakes, feel free to point them out to me, and I will fix them. If I got anything wrong, please feel free to let me know. Thanks!**

**Sit back and relax, as I made this chapter longer.**

_Disclaimer, I don't own Percy Jackson.  
_

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Demigod dreams are bad, everyone knows that. But tonight, Nico didn't even know what was coming.  
The temperature was probably near (if not below) freezing. He was in a dark, narrow hallway. The walls, ceiling, and floor were made of blocks of damp cobblestone. The air was a chill humid and smelled like mildew. Nico walked the length of the passage until he saw a dim, flickering yellow light. when he made it to the end of the hallway, the room widened to his left, and the ceiling stretched far above him. Torches, placed in metal holders, ran the length of the room. The floor was brown stone, and a circular carpet was laid in it's center. There were two things standing on the carpet. Nico heard the sound of metal scraping on metal. He realized it was a strangled voice, coming from one of the figures. The sound changed to a voice he could understand. It reminded him of the time he fell into icy cold water, while on one of his outings.

"Polybotes" the voice said. "Do you bring me what I asked for?" Another round of what sounded like metal scraping on metal. The watery voice snapped "POLYBOTES! CLEAR YOUR THROAT FOR THE LOVE OF-!" There was the loud sound of "ahem" and Nico could suddenly hear what was being said. "Mother Earth, my apologies, Tartarus tends to do that to you."  
The giant continued to speak, "But yes, I do have it." Polybotes went to the edge of the large room, disappearing into another hallway. When he came back, he was lifting a glass box with a hole in one end. The watery voice chuckled. "Hehe... What better way to kill the son of Poseidon than to drown him?" The voice continued to laugh, and Nico almost laughed as well, until he saw what was happening next. They giant took a large tube, and connected one end of the box, where the hole was. Looking up, towards the ceiling, Nico saw where the other end was connected, somewhere in the ceiling. Nico's face paled as he saw what the glass was being filled with. Blood.  
"What irony really, to see the son of the sea god drowned, and rather how fitting, to take the only person capable of insuring your demise Polybotes. All life comes from the sea they say, so how about we kill it?" Nico felt all the color draining from his face, he felt colder than usual, which wasn't good. He suddenly found himself soaking wet, and could hear the sound of a million monsters running toward him at once, the sound of a million fit pattering along the floor.  
Nico woke up. The sky that once was only partly cloudy was completely overcast. It was raining a freezing rain. Nico sat up, and saw his friends, they had been trying to wake him up. "Nico get up! This is no time to practice your sleeping beauty impersonation skills." That got him up. His head throbbed, as if he had dropped the Athena Parthenos on it. He looked around, and saw three piles of bones around him. At first he didn't realize that his friends held a look of terror on their faces, but when he saw it he immediately knew why. There was no time to turn around and grab his Stygian Iron sword at this point, but luckily it was overcast, meaning the shadows were all around him. In one quick motion, he caused the shadows to thicken around the sword, forcing it into the lighter area. He pushed it up from the ground and grabbed it as it flew towards him behind his back. Turning around he lifted his sword above his head, preparing to strike, when he stopped abruptly. Standing there was a boy, about the same age as Nico. He was completely unarmed, but if looks could kill, Nico would be having a chat with his father right now. "What the Hades are you doing in this pasture?" the boy said.

Nico immediately knew this kid was mortal. What he wasn't expecting is the next thing he said. "Put down the sword, or I may need to resort to force!" Nico was utterly speechless. Mortals that could see through the Mist were rare, but here was one standing next to him.  
The boy took something out of his pocket. It looked like a chain, but the chain links were made of bones. He began to murmur something under his breath. He closed his eyes, and Nico watched, stunned, as the sky went dark. Then as quickly as it had darkened, it stopped. The boy opened his eyes, put the chain away, and spoke. "Son of Hades, why have you come to my pasture? Are you here to reap the souls of my family? Well I'd like to let you know that you can try, but death won't claim us!" Nico was regaining his senses. He looked around and saw a flock of sheep in a pen, it had a roof shielding them from the rain. Nico spoke calmly. "Who are you?"  
The boy looked reluctant at first, but then said, "Cassius, keeper of the bridge" Nico looked around, looking for a bridge. "You idiot, not a physical bridge, the bridge between life and death, the bridge that you have to cross before even getting to the Doors of Death." The boy sighed. "You shouldn't be here, none of you should, especially not with that" at this he gestured to the Athena Parthenos. "I feel that thing giving off more power than a hundred nuclear bombs at once. Do you know what that feeling reminds me of? It reminds me of what the souls who come through here feel when they cross the bridge, and look back. They see their old lives, their old homes, they are leaving behind everything they love. Your statue is homesick, and she doesn't seem to be too happy about being in my field, so close to the point of no return." Nico was only staring. The boy wasn't giving off any energy at all what so ever, to even hint that he wasn't completely human. But then something tipped him off. It didn't feel like he was giving off any energy, because he was absorbing it. Nico realized that his own life force was being sucked away from him, slowly.  
Nico turned to his friends. "We need to move. Any idea's on how to get this statue out of here?" They both went wide eyed. "We thought you had that planned..." Nico shrugged, "I haven't gotten that far yet..." But Nico's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a giant footstep.  
Nico turned around, half expecting to see a Giant or a drakon. What he actually did see, wasn't even in the ballpark. In fact, it was exactly what Leo would've expected from the Parthenos. It was moving. It's feet automated. Nico heard gears turning, and for a seconds it looked like the statue was falling apart, stone falling in every direction. But it was what was beneath the stone that really shocked him. Underneath the falling stone, he saw a bronze statue, but the joints of the statue were gears, and the bronze appeared to be hollow, as Nico could see the mess of churning gears and pistons through gaps in what he could only assume to be armor. There was dust everywhere in the air. Nico coughed as he blinked some of it out of his eyes. It smelled like cement. Nico looked up, the sound of tumbling rubble all around him. So much oh what Nico had thought impossible, had happened in the past three minutes, that Nico wanted to find the "off" switch to his brain and go back to bed. Nico walked through the rubble, his friends standing behind him. Nico approached the stat- well, more of a robot now. The 50 foot tall robot looked down at him, gears and pistons churning. It spoke in a clear, but monotone voice.  
"The Son of Sleep will wait 'till dawn,  
to choose between power and pawn,  
the fire will burn, the storm will churn,  
to which the tides of life will turn,  
to choose between a loveless fate,  
or to be turned from all, and live in hate".

Each word she spoke burned itself into the ground in Ancient Greek. The then burn marks... rose form the ground. The next thing Nico could remember was screaming, and when he came to his senses again, he saw the words were burned into his palm. The statue began to shrink in size. She spoke again, this time not burning the ground. "A Giant can only be killed by a demigod and a god working together. Yet alas, here I am." Nico didn't know what she meant, but he didn't have time to consider her words, as she had finished shrinking. Still taller than Nico, though she was only seven feet tall. She ran at remarkable speed toward the busy town of Rome.

The stars twinkled quietly in the sky above them. The cool night air was gently blowing.  
Piper McLean had had one Hades of a day. For Hera's sake! Jason wasn't helping her mood either.  
As soon as Nico had left the area it hit her. The last thing that the Boy in the Shadows was looking at before he disappeared into the Shadow Realm, was Percy. She had often found that the last thing that a person looked at before they were about to travel away was the person or thing they cared about the most.  
'Of freaking course, I should have realized it sooner' Nico had always seemed like the type. And this explained why Jason was probably acting so weird after he got back from that trip with Nico. Something had happened to make Nico let the cat out of the bag. Speaking of the devil, Jason was currently flying around blasting several Venti with lightning, when she had instructed him not to raise attention. As Annabeth had pointed out previously, they didn't want a repeat of the Apennines. It took them nine days just to get out of Italy on the way here. Piper looked over the railing of the Argo II, lifting her Cornucopia. She shot a ventus with some greasy turkey, the oil in which, being a good conductor of electricity caused the storm spirit to overdo the burst of lightning he had been attempting to shoot, causing it do quietly fizzle into nothingness. "JASON GET YOUR-" her next words were lost in the wind, perhaps for the best. "-OVER HERE AND STOP USING LIGHTNING!" Jason flew back over the railing landing next to Piper. His eyes crackled with a dangerous spark that she was all too familiar with. It was one of the things about him that she still couldn't place. Why were his eyes always so energized, even in the mess hall early in the morning, when Jason was tired, she still saw her boyfriends eyes... Strangely energized.

Piper remembered earlier that day. She was supposed to take the day watch, but with every boom of thunder, she had to wake up. She also realized that she must talk in her sleep, because she had obviously tried to charm speak some of the objects in the room. It had been hard bringing Festus to life, but it was apparently easy to bring things like her knife, hairbrush, pillow, and blankets to life, if only for a few seconds. The difference was that Festus was alive for good, at least as good as Piper was. Another thing that was worrying her, as every day she woke up, she wondered if it might be her last. When she had finally fallen back to sleep, dreams were waiting.  
"Piper, welcome" said a chill voice. Piper looked around, expecting to see a hideous monster somewhere. Everything was pitch dark, she was standing in a black void. She couldn't see who was talking, but he continued. "Piper, don't fill your own mind with the illusion that your going to succeed. An image flashed in the dark. It was the image of the grass. Laying in the gently swaying grass was a chain, made out of bone. She saw drops of blood fall onto the chain, melting it.  
"Piper, why don't you abandon your mortal friends. Why would you want to be serving a group of gods who either spend their time warring with each other, or neglecting their children? Why would to follow either sets of gods? Join me with Gaia, you will never die, you will never have to fear abandonment, you will never be sent away because you are too dangerous. We can even save the boy Jason." Piper rose to her full height. "If you think I will help you to destroy the world, everything I know and care about, then you can just go-" The sound of thunder blocked out her voice, and she woke up.  
His voice snapped her out of her thoughts. "Well am I just supposed to let them destroy the ship?" Piper groaned. Why did Jason love showing off with lightning? "Why don't you just tear them apart with the wind?"  
"Piper, controlling the wind is hard, every atom in the air wants to go a different direction, and keeping them all in check is hard to do, when I'm flying, I cause different parts of the wind to push all at once, not controlling one group of it." Piper thought for a while.  
"Well try to be quieter at least! Can you think of any alternatives to-" She was cut off by the sound of alarms going off (how many times was the going to freaking happen today?!). There were enemies approaching the Argo II, quickly. Leo burst through the doors going into the lower deck, and ran to the control panel at the back of the ship. His hands flew across the touch pad and the Wii controllers, but his eyes were adverted, misty, like he was lost in thought, letting his hands do the work. The ballistea aimed at an angle, and shot off the edge of the ship. There was a faint explosion in the distance, and the alarms turned off. Leo ran back through the doors, not acknowledging Piper or Jason. "He's been acting differently lately..." Piper said.  
Jason nodded. "The poor guy hasn't been acting the same after getting shot to gods know where by Khione."  
Piper didn't like to admit it, but she had heard an edge in his voice. She knew that he was still thinking about the second line in the second Great Prophecy. "To storm or fire the world must fall"

-  
Hazel would have made Hecate proud, though that wasn't her intention. Ever since she learned to control the Mist, she had been studying more and more about magic. She would have also made both Mars and Athena give her a (probably fatal) high five. She had been in her room, non stop absorbing any information that she could find. She had... Borrowed at least a hundred books from a shop run by some of Medea's minions with a little help from Piper at their last stop, concerning strategies, magic, ancient runes, wand casting, mirror manipulation, martial arts, sword fighting, archery, so on and so forth. To say the least, the shop was no longer in working condition. She had been delving through all these books in hopes to learn some kind of advantage to add to her skills. She had realized that manipulating the Mist had been a gateway art, opening her eyes. She realized that with that one skill, she had been able to turn the tides in that battle. She wasn't going to let her guard down again. She had one thing in mind, and that was,  
avenging her mother. She was bubbling with fury. She picked up a cylinder of redwood. It had been her third attempt at making a wand, which was basically just a way of channeling the energy that she had into a tight burst. Also, using an incantation would allow the energy to take form. She looked at the wand. She had inserted a small hole where she put thirty drops of her blood into the hollow of the wood, along with a cursed ruby she had smashed into dust. It had congealed over the last few hours, thanks to another trick she had learned. She had sealed the hole and had written ß?µa, the Greek word for cast, on it. She turned and faced a skeleton she had summoned. It was the skeleton of a chicken, in which she had asked for from Piper. She had fed the bones of the chicken the meat from... Itself, and had completed the summoning incantations she had often heard Nico mutter in his sleep. The chicken had connected all of it's joints and stood up. The bones moving around, lifelike.

Hazel pointed the wand at the chicken skeleton, fury in here eyes. She raised her wand, and she was remembering her mother's possessed voice, she flicked it and took in a breath, she was bringing down the cave and sinking the island, a red circle appeared around Hazel as she shouted in the Old Language "OBSTUPEFACIO!" A jet of wind shot from the end, and the skeleton shattered. She grinned. Gaia better have a good insurance plan, because Hazel was going to make sure that nobody would recognize her after Hazel was down with her. It was just then that she heard a knock on the door.

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**A/N Sorry if the scene with Hazel seemed inconvlusive or rushed. Also, this isn't a Harry Potter PJO crossover just because Hazel has a wand. Also, the "Old Language" is just Latin, and obstupefacio is "stun" in Latin, so I thought it would be cool, if the incantations were in a language that connects to Roman Mythology.**

**If I made a mistake or you have any suggestions feel free to review or PM me.**


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